This invention relates to educational devices, and more particularly this invention relates to a device and method for facilitating the teaching of music.
Education, generally, relies on the ability of the teacher to convey ideas and concepts which range from the physical or tangible to extremely abstract. In teaching, and conversely in learning, the various senses of sight, touch, smell, and hearing are brought into play. It is fairly easy to convey ideas relating to tangible things, such as viewing an object or a picture of an object and associating a name with the object. Conveying abstract ideas is considerably more difficult. Such concepts as those of color or smell can be conveyed by literally bringing into play the senses of sight and smell. For instance, a teacher can show a student something colored green and tell him this color is green and the concept will, eventually, be learned. Similarly, a teacher can ask a student to smell an onion and, eventually, the student will associate the particular smell with the object.
But, when dealing with aural concepts, it is more difficult to provide the associations necessary for a student to learn what is being taught. Similarly, there is no natural concrete way to convey the concepts. But, a system of musical notation has been developed over the years and, in fact, has been commonly used for many years and is accepted now as the standard notation. Teaching of music to students who are familiar with, and understand, standard musical notation is widespread. There has been a need for many years for methods of teaching the cognitive content of music without the need of manual skills and without the need for the student to understand musical notation.
There have been attempts at fulfilling this need using various complex electrical circuitry and bulky structures in conjunction with musical notation. These devices have not been satisfactory due to the complicated and expensive structures involved. There have been other devices which would lend themselves to assisting in the teaching of music, these devices being based on magnetic recording strips superimposed upon pages of printed matter. It is necessary to use a device which reads the magnetic signal by relative motion across the magnetic strip and converts it into sound. None of these devices of the prior art has fulfilled the need for a way to teach music utilizing simply manufactured material which can be made using standard printing equipment.